Save your cookie preferences

We use cookies to remember your site preferences, record your referrer and improve the performance of our site. For more information, see our cookie policy.

Please select an option below and 'Save' your preferences.

No cookies. Without any cookies our websites can't remember your site preferences (currency, weight units, markets, referrer, etc.) for your next visit. Any cookies already dropped will be deleted at the end of your browsing session.

BullionVault cookies only. We use these cookies to record your site preferences (currency, weight units, markets, referrer, etc.) for your next visit.

BullionVault cookies and third-party cookies. Also, allow our use of cookies from well-known third parties such as Google, Facebook, Bing and YouTube. These help us understand how visitors use our websites so we can improve them.

You can update your cookie preferences at any time from the 'Cookies' link in the footer.

We use cookies (including third-party cookies such as Google) to remember your site preferences and to help us understand how visitors use our sites so we can improve them. To learn more, please see our privacy policy and our cookie policy.

To agree to our use of cookies, click 'Accept' or choose 'Options' to set your preferences by cookie type.

Gold Prices rallied to $1679 per ounce Monday morning US time – up nearly 1% on last week's close – while stocks, commodities and the Euro also gained and government bond prices fell, after Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said "continued accommodative polices" are still needed to support the US economy.

Silver Prices meantime rose to $32.76 per ounce – up 1.5% from where they ended Friday.

"A wide range of indicators suggests that the job market has been improving, which is a welcome development indeed," Bernanke told the national Association for Business and Economics Annual Conference on Monday morning.

"Still, conditions remain far from normal, as shown, for example, by the high level of long-term unemployment and the fact that jobs and hours worked remain well below pre-crisis peaks."

Bernanke added that a fall in the unemployment rate "will likely require a more-rapid expansion of production and demand from consumers and businesses, a process that can be supported by continued accommodative policies."

"We do expect demand to pick up in April as the Akshaya Tritiya festival in late April is fast approaching," De Wet adds, noting that Akshaya Tritiya is India's second-biggest festival for Buying Gold.

European leaders are set to expand the size of the region's so-called 'firewall', according to press reports Monday.

German chancellor Angela Merkel and finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble have dropped their opposition to combining unused funds in the €440 billion European Financial Stability Facility with the €500 billion European Stability Mechanism when the latter becomes operational in July, German newspaper Der Spiegel reports.

Accounting for funds already committed to Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the move would boost the amount of bailout funds available to around €740 billion, according to the Financial Times.

At last month's G20 meeting in Mexico, European leaders were told they should do more towards solving the Eurozone crisis before asking for a greater contribution from the International Monetary Fund.

Eurozone finance ministers are due to meet this Friday in Copenhagen.

"The key thing now is to conclude the comprehensive crisis response," said Olli Rehn, European Union commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, over the weekend.

Yields on benchmark 10-Year Spanish government bonds have risen from 4.99% at the start of this month to over 5.5% last week – though they remain below the Euro era peaks of 6.7% hit last November.

Earlier this month, Spain's prime minister Mariano Rajoy said he was making a "sovereign decision" to ignore the EU's deficit target of 4.4% of GDP, setting his own at 5.8%, although Spain subsequently agreed to additional budget cuts.

Spanish unions meantime are due to stage a general strike on Thursday.

Banks are set to shrink their balance sheets by a further additional $1 trillion over the next two years, selling assets and closing operational divisions, according to a joint report by Morgan Stanley and consultancy Oliver Wyman.

"The market underestimates the degree to which banks will rationalize their portfolios of activities."

The net long position of so-called speculative Gold Futures and options traders on the new York Comex – measured as the difference between bullish and bearish contracts – fell to its lowest level since the first week of January last week.

The speculative net long position fell 15.4% in the week ended last Tuesday – equivalent to 78.1 tonnes of Gold Bullion – according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission data published on Friday.

"The activity in the futures market suggests a return to the less favorable view on gold of two weeks ago," says Standard Bank analyst Marc Ground.

The world's largest Gold ETF, the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), meantime saw its holdings fall by 10.6 tonnes to 1282.7 tonnes in the week ended last Friday.

Over the same period, the iShares Silver Trust (SLV), the world's largest silver ETF, saw its holdings drop by 36.3 tonnes to 9716.4 tonnes.

Get the safest gold at the lowest prices with BullionVault...

The London Gold Market Report is the daily market review from BullionVault, the world's largest physical gold and silver market for private investors. A full member of professional trade body the London Bullion Market Association, BullionVault publishes the LGMR every day that the market is open, bringing you insider comment and analysis from the very center of the world's $240 billion-a-day physical gold trade, and putting the latest gold price action into its wider financial and economic context

Please Note: All articles published here are to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it. Please review our Terms & Conditions for accessing Gold News, RSS links are shown there.